There are thousands of languages all over the earth, but why are there so many? And why do languages have so many dialects or sounds to them? The simple answer to both of these questions is language change.
What Is Language Change?
Language change is how a language changes over time. It may be a change in pronunciation or in word usage, or even in word order. It is a way that languages grow and morph into something new, but not excessively different. While language change is rarely noticed by the speakers of the language,they eventually be able to hear the differences.
A great example of how a language can change over time is how American English changed so much that it sounds nothing like British English. Even further you can hear the changes when listening to the differences between American English in the southern United States verses that spoken in the northern states. After the change occurs, a group of people called historical linguists can often determine what caused the change.
What Is Historical Linguistics?
Historical linguistics is a specific branch of linguistics. Linguistics is the study of languages and how they work. The historical linguistics branch studies how language has changed over time. It is a scientific branch that has found indications that many languages are closely related to each other, and that there are multiple language families under which most languages can be categorized. Evidence of this can be seen in the analysis of historical and ancient documents or writings and in the comparison of the languages themselves.
Languages are compared to each other on multiple levels, including but not limited to: word order (where the Subject, Verb, and Object fall in a sentence), the sounds made in the language (sounds are what make German sound harsh while Spanish sounds smooth), and how words are put together (there are some languages where a word can be added onto so much that it is an entire sentence by the time you finish with it. English is not that kind of language, while many Native American languages were).
Another Aspect - Sociolinguistics
While historical linguistics look mainly at what has changed in a language, sociolinguistics looks at why the language has changed. This branch focuses on the social changes that occurred in the area that a language was spoken. This knowledge can shed light on why a language may have seen certain changes. while historical linguistics is excellent and mind-boggling, the social aspect that sociolinguistics provides gives great insight on how something like making a major big political decision can greatly affect a people group and its culture, right down to the language that they speak.
Sources:
- Barbara A. Fennell, A History of English: A Sociolinguistic Approach, Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2001.
Sarah Mafera - Sarah Mafera graduated in 2010 with a bachelor's degree in Linguistics and a minor in Teaching English as a Second Language. She joined ...
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